Monday, April 8, 2013

Dr. Fish Cafe

I'm pretty sure the name of this cafe is something else, but since I can't read Korean... Dr. Fish cafe it is! All I knew about this place was that I was going to get my feet eaten by fish. Ok. The dead skin on my feet. I was very excited because I love trying new things (except food. I'm scared of new food. And extreme sports. I'm scared of those too.) I was pleasantly surprised when we got there and I saw how beautiful this place was.

Everything was clean and neatly organized. In order to do Dr Fish, you must order a drink, so my girls Desha, Tracie, Chandra and I ordered a drink each and a honey bread to share. We also ate some bread, butter and jam from the free coffee and bread bar they have.

I ordered a white hot chocolate and I must say it was delicious! One of the best I've had, and the honey bread was definitely the best I've had so far. The girls said that their drinks were great too. We ate and hung out while waiting for our turn in the fish pools. They are small so you and your group must wait for your turn. Each group gets twenty minutes in the pools. These are the small fish:

...and these are the big fish.

We approached the big fish pool just to take a look, and those dudes got crazy, opening their mouths... little hungry things. They looked a little scary.

Finally it was our turn, a girl washed our feet thoroughly before we could get them in the pools. I was a little worried because I am extremely ticklish, and I didn't know what I was going to do to not laugh hysterically in front of all these people.

Chandra and I started joking a little, making fish faces and being silly to avoid actually having to put our feet in there... but the time came and we had to do it! We decided to start with the little fish and then move on to the big ones. I talked to my friend Jahayra before heading out and she said the little ones felt like a vibration, and the big ones felt like a small cat scratching your feet. I couldn't have described it better.

I really enjoyed the little fish. It was very relaxing, but our time was going quick so we decided to switch to the big ones. The big, hungry, scary ones.

The screams, the laughter, it was uncontrollable. We were being SO loud that for a second, I thought they might kick us out, but I figured they deal with crazy loud foreigners all the time, so we should be fine. It felt so weird at the beginning I found it really hard to keep a straight face!

A couple of minutes after the initial shock, you sort of get used to it and can start relaxing a little more. I loved how my feet felt after this experience, and will definitely feed the fish my lovely dead skin again.

It was so much fun! Unfortunately, I walked by this place last week and it seems to be under construction. The whole building is being renovated, and I can't read what the signs say so I don't know if Dr Fish cafe is gone or if it's just closed for a little bit, but I will update this post as soon as I found out.

Thank you Tracie for the photos where you can see me, and thank you for reading!

UPDATE (07/22/2013): According to some people, this Dr. Fish is not located in Gangnam anymore. It has moved to Myeong-dong and apparently, they got rid of the big fish. I will do a second update when I find out more about it.